"Which is more likely: that 150 million Americans are lazy or that 400 Americans are greedy?"
Meaningless hyperbole. All Americans are lazy and greedy, whether or not they're wealthy. More wealth doesn't necessarily make someone more greedy. Less wealth certainly makes one jealous of those who have more (which many Americans can relate to), but even that doesn't necessarily make one more or less greedy than the other based upon the size of a bank account.
Most people seem to forget that for every successful entrepreneur out there you'll find 10 who failed or got stepped on by someone else.
Most people don't seem to understand that every successful entrepreneur fails first and often, sometimes on purpose, learning from his/her failures and applies lessons learned with both sides of the brain. Anyone who avoids failure will never be a successful entrepreneur. The other 10 you write about may or may not be on the continuum of growth that every successful entrepreneur has to experience: a series of rounds of failure, learning, and adaptation. But chances are pretty good that if all 10 of those entrepreneurs dust themselves off and keep learning about what customers want (with a great team), all 10 of them will start something amazing.
Non-entrepreneurs avoid learning from failure because they perceive costs/benefits of failure differently and thrive in environments where any failure is purged, even if it could be helpful. This is fundamentally why new companies founded by entrepreneurs have a distinct advantage over larger companies, because they have less to lose, don't see failure as bad, and are thus much more agile in applying systemic failure to learn lessons about what their customers really want. Whereas larger companies are measured and driven by the bottom line for their shareholders and managers are incentivized along these lines. So the two (entrepreneurs and managers) learn to function and thrive in environments where incentives are fundamentally different.
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"Which is more likely: that 150 million Americans are lazy or that 400 Americans are greedy?" Meaningless hyperbole. All Americans are lazy and greedy, whether or not they're wealthy. More wealth doesn't necessarily make someone more greedy. Less wealth certainly makes one jealous of those who have more (which many Americans can relate to), but even that doesn't necessarily make one more or less greedy than the other based upon the size of a bank account.
Most people seem to forget that for every successful entrepreneur out there you'll find 10 who failed or got stepped on by someone else.
Most people don't seem to understand that every successful entrepreneur fails first and often, sometimes on purpose, learning from his/her failures and applies lessons learned with both sides of the brain. Anyone who avoids failure will never be a successful entrepreneur. The other 10 you write about may or may not be on the continuum of growth that every successful entrepreneur has to experience: a series of rounds of failure, learning, and adaptation. But chances are pretty good that if all 10 of those entrepreneurs dust themselves off and keep learning about what customers want (with a great team), all 10 of them will start something amazing. Non-entrepreneurs avoid learning from failure because they perceive costs/benefits of failure differently and thrive in environments where any failure is purged, even if it could be helpful. This is fundamentally why new companies founded by entrepreneurs have a distinct advantage over larger companies, because they have less to lose, don't see failure as bad, and are thus much more agile in applying systemic failure to learn lessons about what their customers really want. Whereas larger companies are measured and driven by the bottom line for their shareholders and managers are incentivized along these lines. So the two (entrepreneurs and managers) learn to function and thrive in environments where incentives are fundamentally different.